So while editing my question (multiple attempts) I finally found the correct search terms for my original question (see below - I was missing the try-catch part).
Answers I was searching for: Is it expensive to use try-catch blocks even if an exception is never thrown? and/or Which part of throwing an Exception is expensive?
Edited original question: Thanks for the responses everyone, but I can see from the comments that I wasn't clear enough in my question. Sorry about that. Let me hopefully clarify:
I'm new to Java and want to make sure I don't start off forming a bad habit. In Python, I like to validate all user input as early as I can. I often use while loops to do this; however, my projects have been small.
Try-Catch inside While Loop, or many other websites, have examples of while loops that validate a user's input in Java. However, these are also very small code examples.
My question is: Does validating the user's input this way take a lot of processing time/resources? Not just one; but if ALL user inputs were validated this way in a large scale Java project?
The reason I ask is because I worked somewhere in the past (that used Java) where all of the user input wasn't validated. Since I was in quality assurance and support I saw a lot of problems result from this. I'm trying to think of why you wouldn't always use a while loop to validate user input.
Marking as duplicate: Instead of deleting this, I looked at several posts about closing your own question on Meta Stack Exchange. Many of the solutions presented didn't seem to be available for me (probably b/c of lack of privileges). But, I followed the info at: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79916/is-it-possible-to-mark-my-own-question-as-duplicate-of-another - comment - "Close" doesn't appear for me 2011-08-25, but "Flag" did and has a flow to provide an exact duplicate link. – Vincent Scheib Aug 25 '11 at 16:36 - and this worked for me as well.